The Rundown
Maccabi Tel Aviv fell to Hapoel Gilboa/Galil 92-91 in shocking fashion as Jason Siggers drained a last second shot to bury the Yellow & Blue. The visitors only led once during the game and lo and behold it would be when it counted most, at the final buzzer.

Strong play by Andrew Goudelock with 10 first half points along with Victor Rudd’s ten points as well propelled the hosts to a 47-38 halftime lead as the team shot 58% from the field over the first 20 minutes. Murphy Holloway had 10-points to go along with 6 rebounds for Gilboa/Galil, however, as a team the northern squad went only 1/9 from 3-point land. On the flip side, 10 of the 19 rebounds collected by the visitors were of the offensive variety which should have been a talking point during the halftime break for the Yellow & Blue.

Maccabi maintained their lead throughout the third quarter going up at one stage by 16-points, but that didn’t discourage the Gilboa-Galil players as they came charging back in the final frame going on a 10-0 late run. Ariel Beit Halachmi’s pulled within one point 86-85, but Maccabi quickly went up by six points, 91-85. However, they wouldn’t score again as Gal Mekel missed two crucial free throws with only seconds remaining giving Siggers the opportunity to play hero.

3-Pointers
1) Chaos was king at the end of the match for Maccabi Tel Aviv as the Yellow & Blue couldn’t do anything right. Giving up easy chances, not playing aggressively on the boards, especially the offensive ones allowing Gilboa/Galil to grab 17 of their 36, plus being stripped of the ball during a key play of the game, led to the disappointing result. But that wasn’t all. Twenty turnovers also didn’t help matters as the home team has plenty to work on in order to improve going forward. Coach Rami Hadar has plenty to do with they group…

2) Maccabi’s centers for the game Maik Zirbes and Joe Alexander were disastrous as the former went 0/4 from the field while fouling out in only 14 minutes of action. The latter didn’t do too much better picking up two fouls in the first couple minutes of play and ending the night with 7 points. But that’s only the half of it. At the break, the centers combined for one point (!) going 0/5 from the floor. Not good enough…

3) Andrew Goudelock and Guy Pnini looked fantastic, both draining 3-pointers galore going a combined 9/14 for the game, but the captain was quite distraught following the game and who can blame him. He knows along with all of the players that there’s quite a lot of work to do be done and a quick look back to Saturday night’s game will confirm that fact as well. Maccabi is having a massive problem knowing how to kill a game and they better find out soon how to do that or else the poor results both in the Israeli League and in Europe will do them in…

Overtime
Murphy Holloway, Jason Siggers and Eric Griffin are real players and they have a ton of fun down just that. Holloway finished the game with 26 points, Siggers with 19 points to go along with the game winning shot and Griffin ended his night with 13 points. Just read what Holloway had to say about his club and his teammates, it’s quite telling.

They Said It
Murphy Holloway: “It was a great team win for us, confidence, for the club. You know we don’t have the biggest budget in the league, we don’t have the most talented guys but we have the hardest working guys. We go out there every time and compete.”

Coach Rami Hadar: “We are Maccabi Tel Aviv and we need to win these games, I take full responsibility.”

Guy Pnini: “These things happen in basketball. This is the same team that beat Olympiacos away, it’s normal and it’s part of the game.”